Free King David: The Real Life of the Man Who Ruled Israel (Ballantine Reader's Circle) by Jonathan Kirsch Page B

for what David did
not
do to his sheep and his shepherds. (1 Sam. 25:2–8)
    “All hail! and peace be both unto thee, and peace be to thy house, and peace be unto all that thou hast,” one of the young men addressed Nabal in ornately respectful words, perhaps resting his hand ever so casually on the hilt of his sword. “For we come on a good day—give, I pray thee, whatsoever cometh to thy hand, unto thy servants, and to thy son David.” (1 Sam. 25:8–9)
    One phrase that fell from the lips of the young men—“For we come on a good day”—may have been a reference to the sheep-shearing festival then in progress on Nabal's estate, but the words might be taken as an unspoken threat: “You should see us on a bad day.” Yet Nabal, whose name means “foolish” or “churlish,” rejected their demand with bold but foolhardy contempt. 25
    “Who is David?” Nabal replied dismissively. “In these days, every slave who breaks away from his master sets himself up as a chief! Shall I then take my bread, and my wine, and the meat I provided for my shearers and give it to men who come from I know not where?” (1 Sam. 25:10–11) 26
    When these defiant words were reported back to David, he issued an order to his army—“Let every man strap on his sword!”— and four hundred of them set off in the direction of Nabal's estate. As they approached their target, David complained out loudabout Nabal's appalling ingratitude and scolded himself for failing to take the flocks and herds when he first had the chance.
    “He has repaid me evil for good,” muttered David, as if to convince himself he was justified in carrying out the rough justice that he intended to visit on Nabal and his household.
    The Bible depicts David as a man acting out of righteous necessity. God had anointed him to be king but had done nothing at all to put a crown on his head. Instead, David had been forced into flight by King Saul, and he was responsible for the sustenance of his men and their camp followers, including women and children. Nabal was a rich man with far more than he needed, and they were desperate fugitives who survived on what they were able to scare up.
    At this moment, David appears as a kind of Robin Hood, or a Che Guevara. If the churlish Nabal will not give him what he needs to feed his people, David reasons, then he has no choice but to take it by force of arms. And it is a measure of David's charisma that the Bible reader is invited to see him as a heroic figure even when he is acting brutally and criminally. Even on a purely theological plane, David is depicted as a wholly sympathetic figure— after all, he did not
ask
to be anointed as the future king of Israel, and now he has been left to his own devices. To the biblical author who stamped a divine seal of approval on the life story of David, the ends always justify the means: “And David had great success in all his ways, and the Lord was with him.” (1 Sam. 18:14)
    Still, the bloodcurdling threat that fell from David's lips seems more appropriate to a bandit or terrorist than a man on a mission from God.
    “God do the same thing to me and more,” vowed David as he and his army approached the estate of Nabal, “if I leave alive until morning a single one who pisses against the wall!” (1 Sam. 25:22) 27

HAREM
    At least one person in the household was quick to grasp the point of the impending visit by David and his men—Nabal's wife, Abigail, a woman “of good understanding, and of a beautiful form.” Without telling Nabal, she ordered a gift-offering to be prepared for the approaching raiders: “two hundred loaves, and two skins of wine, and five sheep, slaughtered and dressed, and five measures of parched corn, and a hundred clusters of raisins, and two hundred cakes of figs,” all of it to be loaded on asses and sent ahead as if to encourage David and his men to just take the stuff and go away. (1 Sam. 25:18) 28
    Perhaps to mitigate the horror of the threatened